110315 Kurt

The Bernstein Center Freiburg

Bernstein Seminar

Simone Kurt

Institute of Neurobiology
Ulm University, Germany

Auditory discrimination learning in mice

Abstract:
Learning is a crucial mechanism for most animals to adopt their behavior to changing environmental demands. Complex forms of auditory learning, such as generalization of stimuli within and across physical categories or transfer of knowledge from one stimulus discrimination task to another have rarely been investigated in rodents. Knowledge transfer may be understood as profit from previous learning of procedures, stimuli, cognitive skills, and/or tasks in the subsequent task. In the talk I will present examples of an auditory discrimination paradigm in mice to test knowledge transfer between stimulus classes. The results indicate that mice are a promising animal model of general relevance for research on genetics of auditory perception and learning. In addition, I will present an outlook on investigations of recent work about electrophysiological recordings from awake mice auditory cortex.

Host: Janina Kirsch